NPR News announced Wednesday that it is canceling two daily radio programs — Day to Day and News and Notes — as part of a broader effort by the company to close a projected budget shortfall of $23 million for its current fiscal year. Overall, NPR will cut 7 percent of its work force and slash expenses further around the company.

The story adds:

Day to Day was designed as a midday complement to mainstays Morning Edition and All Things Considered, while News and Notes, a successor to The Tavis Smiley Show, was intended to draw more African-American listeners. Beyond the two shows, another 12 journalists will lose their jobs throughout NPR News.

Companywide, NPR is laying off 64 people and eliminating 21 other positions that are currently vacant. NPR News will still have more than 800 employees on staff, including about 300 journalists. . . .

Interest payments from an endowment created from the bequest of the late Joan Kroc, which have typically paid out about $10 million a year to NPR, were wiped out by the sharp downturn in the financial markets. However, NPR’s board authorized the company to draw down $15 million from the company’s operating reserves, most of which also came from the Kroc gift.

In interviews, company officials said they decided to try to make big, specific cuts to mitigate their effect on NPR’s ability to gather and report the news.

Update: Here is more from the Washington Post and here from The New York Times.

… responds to the mainstream media’s diminished coverage of international news. All the major networks have closed foreign bureaus and cut resources for international news coverage, which amounted to just 8 percent of all American news coverage last year.

There is no argument it is needed, but I have been telling anyone who will listen in PBS that the same void is present for a national TV news. Here is part of my argument:

• National news on the networks ABC, CBS, NBC still is about storytelling reporting, but averages 18.6 minutes of news each night. (State of News Media 2008)
• All three networks present almost the same news each night (State of News Media 2008)
• Network TV news: “Coverage of government … shrank markedly, as it did on other media sectors, to just 5% of the stories on the nightly newscasts, down from 27% in 2004.” (State of News Media 2008)
• “…cable news has moved toward commentary, with a focus on a narrower range of topics often of a controversial nature, with a dose of tabloid crime and scandal mixed in…” (State of News Media 2008)
• Cable TV: the “formula in 2007 was a combination of controversial opinion, a dose of tabloid-tinged crime and celebrity, edgy personalities, and, during the daytime, a focus on the immediate.” (State of News Media 2008)

In other words, all that is left of well reported national TV journalism is about 19 minutes day on the three networks, which basically cover the same topics each day.

I also argue PBS can fill the void, just as NPR filled the radio news void:

PBS has the national fundraising apparatus, the video expertise and the physical infrastructure. New technologies have lowered the costs. What I am trying to find out is if PBS has the will.

Are people interested in real TV news? Joel Kramer, former Minneapolis Star Tribune publisher  who started MinnPost, the online newspaper in Minnesota, based on research is betting that about 15 percent of the adult population are news junkies. But the audience could be greater, after all more than 60 million people tuned into the Joe Biden, Sarah Palin Vice Presidential debate last week. PBS could not be a player in the past because of the high cost of producing TV news, but the times have changed:

Thanks to low costs and new technologies, high TV news costs are no longer a barrier. Just as NPR’s professionals carry everything they need in a backpack and produce whole news packages by themselves with just their computers, now TV reporters can do the same at about the same cost. Using these tools, would put PBS in front of the digital revolution.

So if you have some influence at PBS, drop me a note, I will share my full proposal and we can start to make things happen.

 For more ConvergeSouth 2007 videos by Leonard Witt on the future of journalism , see:

1. Jason Calacanis Cold to Local Newspapers as Business

2. Buck the Trend; Start a Newspaper Now

3. Want Science News? Start Your Own Publication 

4. Will Bunch Sees Different, Bright Journalism Future

For any metropolitan newspaper to survive, we need to be part of the community…not be these faceless bylines…I call them citizens and not readers…I am very optimistic about the future of journalism…it’s going to be saved with a lot of turmoil…news organizations that are really stubborn and rigid and change-resistant, some of them are probably going to die…there are going to be opportunities for journalists, they are just going to be different…

For more on the future of journalism, see:
1. Jason Calacanis Cold to Local Newspapers as Business

2. Buck the Trend; Start a Newspaper Now

3. Want Science News? Start Your Own Publication 

For more on the future of journalism, see:

1. Will Bunch Sees Different, Bright Journalism Future

2. Buck the Trend; Start a Newspaper Now

3. Want Science News? Start Your Own Publication 

 Interview made at ConvergeSouth2007 by Leonard Witt.  

Griff Wigley associate Sean Hayford O’Leary did the lion’s share of the redesign, and we moved it from Movable Type to WordPress, which will mean that at least for a while the Google searches will be problematic. But Griff and Sean tell me that in the long run it will all be for the better. We’ll see. Now I love that most often when you type in public journalism my site comes up first at Google. I liked to think I owned the worldwide franchise. Will that be true in the future, as I said, we’ll see.

I have also tried to make the site more interactive. It will be easier for you to comment. So you might start by critiquing the site. Love it, hate it, got an idea to make it even better? One problem, it is viewed best in Mozilla Firefox and looks a little clunky in Explorer IE6, which a third of us still have. Look for the little black box at the bottom right of the home page; if you have the older Explorer IE6 there’s a link to download a newer version. Of course, do so at your own risk. I am just the messenger.

So today’s message: We’re feeling pretty good and hope to continue growing our readership and getting them more involved in reinventing a more sustainable high quality journalism. As always, thanks for stopping by.

10 Innovators Place in 2007 Knight-Batten Awards

You can view the finalists as well as more than three dozen other notable entries at www.j-lab.org. The top winner will be announced Sept. 17 at a free symposium and luncheon, “Creativity Unleashed,” at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. This year’s finalists are:

CFR.org Crisis Guides – In-depth, interactive news and information guides to the world’s most pressing crisis zones that seek to operate according to the tenets of objective journalism within a think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations. They help make sense of complex issues beyond U.S. borders.

Second Life Virtual News Bureau – Reuters’ virtual news bureau in the online 3D world known as Second Life is engaging more than 7 million users in financial news, participatory interviews with top newsmakers and virtual news delivery devices, all anchored within the professionalism of Reuters’ real world practice of journalism.

TechPresident.com – A data-rich, group blog that is breaking investigative stories, collecting voter-generated content, and charting the metrics of a net-centric presidential campaign – from tracking video views of candidates on YouTube, numbers of their “friends” on MySpace and Facebook, voter demands for appearances on Eventful, blog mentions on Technorati and voter-generated photos on Flickr.

MyTeam Varsity High School Sports – The OrlandoSentinel.com’s highly participative high school sports zone shows the newspaper’s commitment to serving its community by offering every school a customized sports page and every parent a way to track an athlete. User-generated content supplies scores, schedules, announcements, photos and ways to compare high school statistics in Central Florida.

onBeing – The washingtonpost.com’s engrossing video-portrait series captures intimate, unexpected stories that citizen narrators share with an invisible journalist who distills the epiphanies of commonalities among her diverse subjects. Each video can be viewed, downloaded, e-mailed, sent by cell phone or discussed.

The Forum – An all-volunteer online newspaper for Deerfield, N.H., that in two years has become the major source of news for three rural communities. In a readership area of 7,000 homes, it has more than 200 bylined contributors and averages 37 original articles per week, excluding obituaries, classifieds, letters to the editor and events listings.

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One person said initially he didn’t believe independent organizations could change journalism. Then he watched the effect independent organization had on organized politics in this county. Now he sees the possibilities that independent organizations have for making change. (Witt aside: When I attended the Media Reform conference in Memphis in January, the energy was palpable and the reformers had moved beyond the talk stage, they were, by their work on the ground, changing media.)

Reporters can go from reporting about problems to reporting about how problems can be solved.

Citizen Journalism is too broad a term. It must be subdivided, for example, 1. Opinion 2. Crowdsourcing 3. Investigative outside of mainstream media.

Citizen journalists share the story, they don’t cover it.

We ignore internet policy to our own peril; we must engage in net neutrality issues.

The role of journalists must be conveners of conversation.

There is a general divide between educators and students. Educators see the Woodward, Bernstein model of speaking truth to power. Students see journalists who bring people together in conversation.

Three issues face journalism 1. The ad model is broken 2. Journalism itself is flawed; it has been rejected by audience. 3. The values themselves must change as we move from a one-to- many model to a many-to-many model.

To invest in a civically engaged public, we must invest in young people as leaders.

Reporters won’t go out and cover a story about, let’s say, generosity; the male dominated press sees it as too feminine. We need more feminine perspectives.

Ethnic media has to be better represented, we must acknowledge ethnic media.

See more JTM photos are Flickr.

We may not be able to save newspapers, but we can save journalism.

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Chris Peck editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal is on the stage right now for our Journalism that Matters prelude session: “The State of Citizen Media Update.”

Here are my rough note, my paraphrasing of what was said, my blogging on the fly. CSPAN is taping it. So it should be on TV soon.

Audience is coming up with questions: What new skill sets do our journalism students need? How does an online site make enough revenue to main journalism? Do we want the community to be able to vote some journalist off the island? What is the best way to ensure accuracy, fairness, balance? Does the general public know what is going on, if not, how do we get them involved? How are young people involved in citizen journalism? Crowdsourcing requires a crowd, how to do it working in differing communities from New York to Montana? How does citizen journalism compete with monolith’s like Google?

So the audience asked their questions, now the answers.

Faye Anderson speaks about a code of conduct. She thinks a code of conduct is a bad idea. Idea of citizen journalism is that there is no arbitrary set of rules.

She now has a question for Jay Rosen: Has the mainstream media gotten too close to the powers that be?

Jay Rosen: I start with idea that if more people participated in the press, the press would be better off. The people have the power to own the public life. There are bloggers of all kinds from partisans to objective, but all believed the people should participate. Readers are now writers, every citizen is a political actor.

Jay question for Merill Brown chair of NowPublic: You have thousands of correspondents from around the world and you have $10 million. What are you assuming all the people can do, what is the capacity of the citizen journalists, when you have money to spend on citizen journalism?

Merrill: We have to create great tools, we need offices to work nearby our contributors, will not just be a vehicle for them, but will provide cameras or training or a thoughtful citizen journalism, maybe pay them. We haven’t figured out much about it all. We are making it up as we go on. We are lucky enough to have some money to make this happen. It is not about office space or high priced employees; it is about empowering people all around the world.

To Dan Gillmor: Are we in a good place right now with the citizen journalism?

Gillmor: On balance we are seeing progress, there are literally thousands of experiments going on. Most of them will fail, but also keep in mind that the cost of experimenting with new products, new ideas is almost down to zero. There will be widely distributed experimenting. Most things fail, but some don’t. The barrier between trying an idea is almost invisible. The big idea is keeping track. How do keep thoroughness, transparency, fairness etc. Then if we add real media literacy, I think we will get this right. I am enormously optimistic..

Question to Peggy Kuhr: What have you learned from citizen journalism training you have done?

Peggy Kuhr: Worked with all kinds of citizens were interested in journalism. People loved it. All had an interest in what was going around them and what journalism is about. Interested in photojournalism, and they wanted more homework assignments. They liked the critiquing of their work. Some wanted edits to their copy.

Cody Howard is doing the journalism every day, has trained journalists. What have you learned from your experiences?

Have about 40 journalists in their five week course. What is the expertise that the citizens have that our journalists don’t have. We were surprised by the level interest immediately. Some 200 people got applied. Some of them have taken it on as a freelance. People craved homework, feedback and what to participate. How do you bring all the people together and reign in their interest. Maybe they are not sure how to contribute. How to become part of the conversation.

Jay Rosen: I am trying to figure out if there is an open system. An open platform, meaning thousands of people working on one story. In NetAssignment.net. thousands of people signed up. The internet today is allowing like-minded people to find each other and share information. Allows lots people to be involved in information production. At the same time as we have the old system learning to be more participatory, we have the new system trying to be more journalistic. People want to participate, they don’t necessarily to know how. If you can design a project that meets people needs and time, you can succeed. We don’t know if these open methods can work. I am not trying to reproduce traditional journalism. I am trying to get far beyond that. Americans do not believe that journalism ever belonged to the people. Last 10 or 15 years, press has shifted location. Part owned by the press, part by citizens and then other actors like nonprofits. The press was 85 percent by professionals in the industry. Now it’s maybe 45 percent. What will make a better journalism a shared press or one owned by just by the press?

Question for Jan Schaffer: You were a traditional journalist and now you are on a journey to citizen participation? What item of professionalism did you have to change your mind about or abandon?

It is not about abandoning. It is adding. In the past, there was no aspirations to get involved with the public. A lot of journalism is broken. The conventions get in the way of good journalism. Citizens for example do not frame things in terms of conflict, like traditional journalists do. Last election I got more information from op-ed columns than I did from the news side of the press. We are trying to save legacy journalism. Instead we need more participation. We need to pay attention to equilibrium, the participants have to get something back from their production.

Merrill Brown: We will make it easy to upload photos, to make connections to other people in the network, to get press passes to events or simple civic meeting. Making it easier to do task that journalism in the past have provided obstacles. If a paper fails in your town, will it matter?

Jay Rosen: If some failed that might be positive, because something would replace them

Shaffer: A lot of regional news organizations will not survive. But others will arise to fill the information gap. A lot of them will have journalism like values. Accuracy, objectivity, transparency….it is not rocket science.

Rosen: Some of the bad newspapers deserve to die. The need for information comes from human curiosity and shared problems.

Faye Anderson : In the 2004 election saw a headline: Low black turnout responsible for democratic loses….I worked with lots of voter empowerment groups..I knew what happened on the ground. I saw that headline, and I am wondering where are they getting this information. The journalists got it wrong, we organized a media briefing , to tell our side of the story. Today the last thing would be to have a media briefing. Now we can tell the story that the mainstream got it wrong.

Dan Gillmor: Lots of changes. Gannett is a leader in making this

Rosen: It was a great business for 80 years; it had a good run.

Clyde Bentley: Are we trying to save the journalism or the industry?

Schaffer: The entities are in danger, but the final product is being produced by a can do mindset.

Rosen: We would not try to hold on to newspapers, but I do think we need news organization that endure and equip people to do great journalism.

He is on the board. Eight days we have $10 million dollars in venture capital.

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Of course, if it goes as well as our dinner, well, this will be very BIG. Earlier I blogged about my Representative Journalism idea. Dan Gillmor was talking about his idea on cooperative journalism which made me think we might already have cooperative groups ready to hire their own Representative Journalist or at least invest in cooperative reporting as Gillmor suggests. For example, Community Supported Agricultural groups. They have a common interest.

Photo to the left is Steve Silha, left, and Dan Gillmor, to the right Fabrice Florin of NewsTrust.net. and below Peggy Holman and Bill Densmore. More tomorrow.

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